1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a system to detect, administer and/or evaluate configuration data describing the hardware and/or software configuration of different (in particular medical technology) devices.
2. Description of the Prior Art
For a variety of technical devices, in particular for medical technology devices, several systems are known to assist in maintenance and support as well as for information exchange among customers. For example, it is known that software or firmware updates can be downloaded (for example from an Internet platform of the manufacturer) and installed on such devices. Customer-to-customer systems (often abbreviated as “c2c”) allow the exchange of information between operators of devices is well known. For example, Internet platforms are known in which operators of magnetic resonance systems can exchange configurations, examination protocols or sequences among one another.
Particularly in the medical technology field, a large number of possibilities for personal adjustment and/or modification of the complex devices exist with regard to both software and hardware. Operators modify the purchased apparatuses via upgrades and expansions and resell apparatuses or parts thereof, such that the internal databases of the manufacturers become less accurate with the passage of time as to the actual state of the device. This makes it difficult for the manufacturer to accurately provide the customers with information and upgrades for their systems.
For the operators of the devices, it becomes ever more difficult to exchange information, tools or the like since the different equipment states of the apparatuses (thus their different configurations) must be taken into account for that purpose. For example, if Hospital A would like to pass an internally-developed examination protocol to Hospital B, it is often not clear whether the technical equipment at Hospital B is sufficient to implement this protocol at all.
This problem cannot be remedied through the manufacturers' own databases of the sold devices, since, as noted above, ever greater deviations of the installed base (the entirety of the installed and operated devices) from these databases occurs with time due to resales, modifications and the like. For example, expansions or replacement parts from third party manufacturers can be purchased, and software updates that have been sent to the customer may not have been actually input.
For the end users of the apparatuses (the patients and the referrers, for the most part physicians, in the example of medical technology) it also becomes ever more difficult to identify suitable devices for planned examinations. For example, only a relatively small subset of the magnetic resonance tomography systems available worldwide are suitable for examinations of the heart. However, for a physician or patient there exists no possibility to discover where the nearest suitable system is available.
This lack of transparency increasingly becomes a problem since, due to technical progress, ever more apparatuses will be installed, and ever more equipment variants will be provided for every apparatus. Given a modern medical technology device, for example, there are often significantly more equipment variants available than there are apparatuses of a model series that are manufactured at all, such that it is possible that no single device is the same as any other.
Particularly with regard to combinations of components of various manufacturers, the problem is exacerbated since most known databases or the addressed online communities are manufacturer-specific; this means that they pertain only to the customers and devices or components of the respective manufacturer.